WASH­ING­TON (AP) — Ad­dress­ing a con­cerned na­tion and anx­ious world, Pres­i­dent Joe Biden vowed in his first State of the Union ad­dress Tues­day night to check Russ­ian ag­gres­sion in Ukraine, tame soar­ing U.S. in­fla­tion and deal with the fad­ing but still dan­ger­ous coro­n­avirus.

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh dodged ques­tions con­cern­ing video footage that showed there were pos­si­ble breach­es of the Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions at a So­ca con­cert at the Grand Stand, Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain.

T&T will be re­ceiv­ing 75,000 dos­es of Pfiz­er next week as the cur­rent dos­es will ex­pire by Mon­day said Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh.

The na­tion­al COVID-19 death toll now stands at 3,608 lives lost with the deaths of five more peo­ple—four el­der­ly men, and one el­der­ly woman—ac­cord­ing to the lat­est up­date from the Min­istry of Health.

The na­tion­al COVID-19 death toll now stands at 3,603 lives lost with the deaths of sev­en more peo­ple—six el­der­ly men, three el­der­ly women and one mid­dle-aged man—ac­cord­ing to the lat­est up­date from the Min­istry of Health.

■ Low vac­ci­na­tion rates in the Caribbean must be ur­gent­ly ad­dressed to stop the spread of COVID-19, says PA­HO Di­rec­tor, as 10 out of 13 coun­tries and ter­ri­to­ries in the Amer­i­c­as yet to reach 40% cov­er­age are in the Caribbean… but the tide can still be turned with tar­get­ed in­ter­ven­tions ■

Four­teen more peo­ple—six el­der­ly men, three el­der­ly women and three mid­dle-aged men, and two mid­dle-aged women—have lost their lives to COVID-19, while an­oth­er 722 peo­ple have test­ed pos­i­tive for the dis­ease, ac­cord­ing to the lat­est up­date from the Min­istry of Health.

(AP) — Is omi­cron lead­ing us clos­er to herd im­mu­ni­ty against COVID-19? Ex­perts say it’s not like­ly that the high­ly trans­mis­si­ble vari­ant — or any oth­er vari­ant — will lead to herd im­mu­ni­ty.

Eight more peo­ple—three el­der­ly men, one el­der­ly woman, two mid­dle-aged men, and two mid­dle-aged women—have lost their lives to COVID-19, while an­oth­er 412 peo­ple have test­ed pos­i­tive for the dis­ease, ac­cord­ing to the lat­est up­date from the Min­istry of Health.

There are 35 ad­di­tion­al COVID-19 cas­es in To­ba­go, bring­ing the is­land’s cur­rent ac­tive in­fec­tions to 279, ac­cord­ing to the up­date for Mon­day 21st Feb­ru­ary 2022, re­leased by the Di­vi­sion of Health, Well­ness and So­cial Pro­tec­tion, in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA). 

● Cal­cu­lat­ing the num­ber of coro­n­avirus deaths world­wide is fraught with chal­lenges. Could we have been get­ting it wrong? ●

LON­DON (AP) — British Prime Min­is­ter Boris John­son said Mon­day that he is scrap­ping the last do­mes­tic coro­n­avirus re­stric­tions in Eng­land, in­clud­ing the re­quire­ment for peo­ple with COVID-19 to self-iso­late, even as he ac­knowl­edged the po­ten­tial for new and more dead­ly vari­ants of the virus.